From: Carl W. Conrad (email@example.com)
Date: Sun Feb 11 2001 - 08:51:47 EST
At 8:20 AM -0500 2/11/01, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>> >In Gal 3:8 we have:
>> >PROIDOUSA hH GRAFH hOTI EK PISTEWS DIKAIOI TA EQNH hO QEOS,
>> >PROEUANGGELISATO TWi ABRAHAM hOTI ENEULOGHQHSONTAI EN SOI
>> >PANTA TA EQNH.
>> Is the distance between PROEUAGGELISATO from hH GRAFH the real problem? I
>> think the only thing distancing that verb from the subject is the need to
>> complete the object of PROIDOUSA by giving the entire hOTI clause.
>Is there any reason why Paul did not write as follows?
> PROIDOUSA hOTI EK PISTEWS DIKAIOI TA EQNH hO QEOS,
>> >PROEUANGGELISATO hH GRAFH TWi ABRAHAM hOTI ENEULOGHQHSONTAI EN SOI
>> >PANTA TA EQNH.
Now why would Paul want to make things easy for us? You'll have to ask him
when you get the chance. I don't know what our word-order buffs will say,
but it seems to me that the word-order indicates that Paul puts his causal
participial phrase in advance of the verb; well, you've done that too.
Certainly there's no reason why the sentence COULD NOT have been formulated
as you suggest, but it wasn't so formulated. I sometimes suspect that the
fact of Paul's dictating to an amanuensis is a factor in producing what to
us seems a rather contorted syntactic formulation. Plato is said to have
spent the better part of a whole day settling upon the word-order of the
opening sentence of the Republic: KATEBHN CQES EIS THN PEIRAIA; I find that
hard to believe actually, although I can readily believe that Plato went to
great pains with his writing. Vergil is said to have dictated 10 lines of
Latin hexameters in the morning and then to have spent the rest of the day
"licking them into shape like a mother bear her cubs." Paul never had that
luxury when writing letters, I think.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
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